CHAPTER XIII.

HOME IN THE SPIRIT.

"And now for my letter!" exclaimed Denzil, as he hurried eagerly from the excited throng about the cantonment gate to his new quarters, a bungalow of somewhat humble construction, as its low roof was thatched, and its walls built of the unburnt brick peculiar to Cabul. Save his bed and table, a chair, some bullock trunks, and accoutrements, furniture or ornament it had none.

The letter lay on the table, and, as he entered, its black-edged envelope gave him a shock. Audley had not mentioned this circumstance, for he humanely knew that until the fatal conference was over, and Denzil could get it perused, his anxiety would be torture, as "the dim shadow of an unknown evil is worse than the presence of a calamity whose worst is told."

It proved to be from Sybil, and, curiously enough, had been brought from Bombay by Audley Trevelyan! In India, people when "up country" are thankful to get their home letters, even though six months old, and, in the joy of receiving one, the longing to learn all it contained--tidings of those he loved, and who were so far away--Denzil forgot the terrible double catastrophe he had so recently witnessed--the cruel butchery of two gallant gentlemen; he forgot even about Rose Trecarrel, and cast himself into his chair, to enjoy the full luxury of perusing it; but for a time an envious film spread over his eyes when he attempted to read--a film that was soon to turn to tears.

"Ah! England and Sybil," he murmured, "how far, far, I am away from you!"

The letter was dated some months back; and the first few words gave the young military exile a dreadful shock, for they told him of his mother's death:--

"Oh, Denzil, my brother, how my heart yearns for you now more than ever! You know how much she loved us, Denzil, and how much our lives were bound up in each other; thus I cannot convince myself that I am quite alone, that she has gone from this world for ever, and that we shall never see her more--never see that sweet smile which her beautiful dark eyes always wore for us. Our darling mamma! I send you a lock of her hair (you will see that grey had begun to mingle with it); and I send you also a wild violet that grew near the grave where I buried her."

Sybil's writing here became tremulous, almost illegible, and falling tears had evidently blotted the ink. The poor young subaltern seemed to forget his present surroundings; he felt himself a boy again, and, covering his bowed-down face with his hands, wept bitterly.

"Time will soften what we suffer, Denzil; but shall I ever be the same again? I never had any plan or future unconnected with poor mamma, after you left us, and our papa was lost. I fear she wore her life out with thinking of what would become of us--of me, perhaps, more especially--when she was, as she now is, dead and gone. There cannot be two beings more isolated than you and I are now, dear Denzil, and your letters are my only comfort. I am so thankful to find from them that you are a favourite with so many, that General Trecarrel is so kind; and that honest fellow, Bob Waller, too, I feel that I quite love him. How do you like the Misses Trecarrel? Rather giddy, are they not? Has Mr. Audley Trevelyan joined yet?"

Then, as if with the mention of Audley's name other thoughts that were unknown to Denzil occurred to her, Sybil added--

"My music and my sketching days are ended now, Denzil; as some one has it, 'I may put away all the bright colours out of my paint-box, for they have gone out of my life.' Vainly has our rubicund Rector, fresh from his pretty parsonage, his happy family circle, as yet unbroken and unclouded by sorrow, fresh, perhaps, from his sumptuous luncheon and glass of full-bodied old port, besought me to take comfort--that grieving for the dead was useless--and told me that there is One above 'who turneth the shadow of death into mourning,' for I can only weep as one who would not be comforted. The old man is very kind to me, however--bless him! though we have suffered much through that horrid Lamorna peerage story--much at the hands and tongues even of those to whom mamma was ever open-hearted, and all charity and benevolence; but you will remember what Lady Fanshawe says of our common Cornish folks in her time, that 'they are of a crafty and censorious nature, _as most are so far from London_.'

"My next letter will tell you more certainly of my future intentions, and all that immediately concerns myself. Our faithful nurse, Winny Braddon, whose brother perished with papa, has gone to spend--to end, I should say--her days with old Mike Treherne and his wife, who, as you know, is her sister; and the Rector, who takes care of me--for I am all but penniless now--is to give me an introduction to a lady of high rank, who is about to go abroad; to where I know not--to India itself perhaps. Would to Heaven it were! for then we might meet again."

"My sister a companion--compelled, for bread, to submit to whim, caprice, neglect, and mortification! Oh, my father, has it come to this!" groaned Denzil in agony of spirit.

"The sunlight is setting redly on the rough summits of the Row Tor and Bron Welli. All is quiet--quiet as death around me; I can hear but the beating of my own heart, the most earnest prayers and blessings of which go with these lines across the seas to you, dear Denzil."

So ended this letter, which he read many, many times, heedless of the unwonted bustle which reigned in the cantonments, where the gunners were getting additional cannon mounted, the miners forming barricades and traverses, and other vigorous preparations being made for defence in case of a too-probable attack.

Denzil had learned that within every shadow, however deep, there may be a darker shade; and now that shade within the shadow that had fallen on him was the death of his mother.

His mother dead! Another beloved face gone as his father's had gone--a sweet and winning face he saw in fancy still, yet never should look on again. How much there were of past care and years of love and tenderness to remember now! Then there were his only sister's utter loneliness and helplessness to appal him. How trivial a calamity seemed the coquetry of Rose Trecarrel when compared to sorrows such as these! And she had died the tenant of a humble cottage on the moors--the property of Mike Treherne, the miner, whose son was now a sergeant in his company!

And could it be that for months past, while he had been happy, thoughtless, heedless, and full of merriment among his comrades, that she who loved him beyond her own life, purely and unselfishly as only a mother can love an only son, had been in her dark cold grave, and he knew it not? No thought by day, no vision by night, no intuition or thrill of magnetic affinity (such as that of which we read in the Corsican twins and their mother), had told him of this; and yet it was so.

Far away from where the embattled Bala Hissar looked down on the flowing Cabul, on the Mosque of Baber and the Obelisk of Alexander the Macedonian, from the English cantonments and all their associations, even from thoughts of Rose Trecarrel's auburn hair and tender brown eyes, Denzil's mind, swifter than the electric telegraph, flashed home to the land from whence that letter came--to Cornwall with its mines below the rolling sea; to its granite quarries where the thunder-blast, loud as a salvo from the Bala Hissar, told of the riven rock; to its stone avenues solemn and hoary, and the great rock-pillars of the Fire Worshippers of old; to the dark brown moors of Bodmin, where in summer the drowsy bee hummed over the heath-bells and wild honeysuckle; to the towering bluffs on which the empurpled waves were rolling in the light of the sun as he set beyond Scilly, "the isles of the god of day;" to tarns where the water-lily floated, and to pools where the speckled trout was darting to and fro; to his rugged home, we say, went all his thoughts--to the Land's End with all its masses of splintered rocks, worn and bleached by the seas of ages, split and rent like columns of basalt amid the brine--rocks where the fresh-smelling seaweed and the scarlet sea-anemone clung, and on whose summit the weary miner sometimes sat and rested after his toil to watch the passing ships, or to ponder when next his pickaxe would discover "a lode of tin or a goodly bunch of copper ore" in those burrows beneath the sea over which the keels were gliding, their crews little wotting that human beings were in those lighted mines fathoms deep below;--over all these familiar scenes the mind of Denzil wandered, to settle again in fancy on his dead mother's face; to think of his sister's loneliness--of the vast distance by sea and land that separated them,--of his own now-narrow means; and his heart seemed to wither up within him.

So the long night wore away, and the day began to break. Its advent was heralded by the boom of a 24-pounder from the Bala Hissar, by the merry drums and fifes giving the _reveillez_, and by strokes on the flat metal ghurries that hung in front of the guard-houses; but Denzil sat heedless, very pale, and absorbed in thought.

* * * * * *

"Come, my dear fellow, don't mope, and don't give way thus--it is no earthly use doing so," said the cheerful voice of Bob Waller on the evening of the second day that Denzil had been permitted to absent himself from parade. "I know what I felt when my own mother died--God rest her! We were on the march to Ferozepore, under General Duncan, when the letter reached me--thought I should die too--wanted sick leave to go home, and all that sort of thing. Come to my bungalow and have a weed, with some brandy-pawnee; or shall I stay with you? By the way, here is Trevelyan's card of condolence. Good style of fellow, Trevelyan: he and the Trecarrels give you their kindest wishes." (This conjunction made Denzil wince.) "Will you come with me to Mabel--Miss Trecarrel, I mean?" added the good-hearted, well-meaning Waller. "She is so sensible, sympathetic, and kind."

"I should prefer being alone," replied Denzil moodily.

"But you can't be alone."

"Why?"

"The whole 37th have come in, and the Shah's 6th Foot from the Bala Hissar. These Afghan beggars have some movement in contemplation to cut us off, and the cantonments are quite crowded."

But for a time Denzil would seek no relief, save in military duty.